like i said before, not all companies have the resources to be able to fully test a game.. they do what they can, but they do have very important deadlines to reach.. especially young companies that havnt made tons on major hits yet..
my guess is larian works somewhat game-to-game still .. you have to remember, that if the game takes 2 years to make, thats 2 years they are making 0 profit.. all the computers, servers to pay for, rent, utilities, paychecks.. it adds up.. for a bigger company thats been around longer, or for a young company that has already had a major hit (look at valve.. major hit in half-life and they can afford to twiddle thier thumbs with halflife 2 and take as long as they have to really get it to the place they want it to be, due to the fact they have alot of money reinvested into HL2 from HL1, as well as alot of support from publishers)..
about early releases to certain people, they already do that.. they have alpha and beta testing.. depending on the games (large beta testing usually with multiplayer games) most companys carry a small QA team during the creation process, and as they get closer to a playable game, they bring on more, and depending on the size of the company, the amount of QA/playtesters go up..
and i dont know about larian specifically, but at least other game companies do test thier game on other machines, with other hardware/software.. how do you think they know the minimum requirements? with most games they do tests with ATI vs Nvidea cards.. to see if it runs well with both.. you will see that alot will lean one way or the other based on what they used while testing.. certain errors may no pop up on an ati card, that would be caught on a nvidea card..
personally, i dont mind it.. id be angry if larian wasnt releasing working patches on a steady basis, but they are.. sure some errors.. but they are working through it..
its all about $$ people..
look at how they sold DD for $20, build up a market for thier name, and then release BD for $40.. hey, neither have multiplayer,and BD doesnt really offer more playing time than DD (i think it does, but if DD were already 40, it wouldnt warrant making BD 80, or even 60..).. its smart they did that if they sold half a million coppies of DD and, then half a mil of BD, they just made twice as much money on BD with the same amount of owrk.. but it was DD being cheaper that i think got some people to try it out.. was well worth 40, but fo rmost people who looked at it, they have no clue what larian is, or what divine divinity is (and for some the name was just to goofy).. but as i did, and others i know, it was a great game that i/we enjoyed.. so i bought BD as well.. more money to larian.. this may mean thier next game is more bug free, or may mean the next game will have modern graphics (lol sorry.. 2d is getting old.. they do a great job with what they have though)
